Soldier's Poem
by Beaubier
Summary: 1602 oneshot. Niccolo Fury, formerly Her Majesty’s Intelligence, more recently hunted by His Majesty’s Operatives in the New World, wakes to find himself in a dystopian future. The future belonging to one Steve Rogers...


TITLE: Soldier's Poem  
AUTHOR: Beaubier  
AUTHOR'S E-MAIL: fastlove.for.rentATgmailDOTcom  
FANDOM: Marvel 1602  
PERMISSION TO ARCHIVE: Given gladly, but I do request that you let me know.  
CATEGORY: Drama/Action/Adventure  
RATINGS/WARNINGS: Rated PG for dark themes and thoughts, but nothing more since Fury gets to be all Elizabethan.  
SUMMARY: Niccolo Fury, formerly Her Majesty's Intelligence, more recently hunted by His Majesty's Operatives in the New World, wakes to find himself in a dystopian future. The future belonging to one Steve Rogers—a man he's come to know only as Rojhaz, protector of Virginia Dare, first child born to English settlers in the New World. He's sacrificed himself for his universe. But can Steve do the same?  
DISCLAIMER: Marvel 1602 and all its characters are the properties of Marvel Entertainment, Inc. 1602 was conceived and written by Neil Gaiman, after the genius of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. I just wish I was as cool as those guys. Don't sue me, I'm just having fun.  
NOTES: This ficlet was written for the LJ community 1602 ficathon at the request of LJ user silverapples. It was the one of the three requests I was given that I was least likely to write. So naturally, loving a challenge, I made myself write it first. This takes place immediately following the events of 1602, issue #8, when Niccolo Fury and Steve Rogers (Rojhaz) are taken from the year 1602 and sent back to the time from which Steve had come in the first place. There are spoilers within for the entirety of the 1602 run. The title "Soldier's Poem" was gleaned from a Muse song of the same name. DoubleL27 of ff.n fame gets my firstborn for stepping up to the beta plate at the last minute! Huzzah!

(And before anyone complains, TTW will be done this week, scouts' honor.)

* * *

**Part I**

Steve Rogers didn't need to open his eyes to know where he was. He didn't need to feel the lump on his head with tentative fingers to know how he'd gotten there. He didn't even need to move a muscle to figure the whole story. It was simple enough.

Fury had lied.

He could smell it all around him. A smell so different from the dreamworld he'd been inhabiting for fifteen years now. An acrid smell, electricity and metal surrounding him, an odor that he associated with modernity. Progress.

Fascism.

Everything they'd traded him for. Everything he hadn't fought hard enough to keep from coming. The memories had seemed so faded, fuzzy, surreal back there on the ship from King James' England to Roanoke. Back there, four hundred something odd years ago. But the smell brought it all crashing back to him now, a tidal wave of bitter memory riding that scent.

He'd often heard that scents could bring back memories, and experienced it once or twice himself. The smell of sulfur always reminded him of the battlefield. The smell of ashes of the Death Camps. The smell of hamburgers on the grill… McDonalds.

But this… he hadn't been ready for this.

Spreading his fingers wide on the metal sheet below him, the sheet that had served as a bed to him before they'd tried to rid themselves of his meddling, Steve Rogers took a deep breath of that air. Air that had never seemed quite so acrid before, quite so alien. He let his breath out and was only mildly surprised to feel a suspicious wetness in the corner of his right eye.

He let it form, tracing its progress carefully with his mind as it took its time releasing itself from his eyelashes. Then slid with growing speed over his cheekbone, and finally into his ear. A wet trail that would turn to salt crust if he didn't touch it.

And he wouldn't.

He'd failed again. He'd been given a second chance, a chance to guard America from its earliest beginnings. He'd already come so far. No stranger to history lessons, Steve had recognized Virginia Dare and her compatriots as those of the long lost colony of Roanoke immediately. Previous to that, he hadn't been certain what time and place he'd landed in—there were many strange things in the world that he did not understand. He'd recognized the tribe, even the area of North Carolina…

But Virginia Dare was unmistakable. He'd seen the statue for her in the gardens at Cape Hatteras on a family vacation as a child. He never forgot the name, though the face was hardly the same one that had been imagined by the artist a hundred years after the Roanoke Colony was lost. His Virginia Dare was infinitely sweeter.

The perfect chance. And he'd failed. Just like he'd failed here and now.

_Some Captain America_, he thought, a slight choking sound escaping his throat.

**Part II**

Niccolo Fury opened his eyes.

It was a shock in and of itself—he distinctly remembered thinking he was walking into his doom (despite the fact that it had been at Sir Reed's urging. The man had been held captive by Count Otto the Handsome for years—a little madness was doubtless the beginnings of the man's problems.) Yet, here he was. Alive. Un-doomed.

Of course, that might've been jumping to conclusions somewhat.

The first move he made was to right himself—he'd awakened in a somewhat undignified position, on a cold, hard floor of some manner of stone. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he was able to quickly assess his situation. There were several varieties of light issuing from what he could only assume were metal walls. Some were blinking, some were constant, but all as tiny pinpoints of light. Flashing or steady, they meant little to him other than as a curiosity.

A large volume of light issued from a flat panel of some sort nearby and some feet above his position on the floor. Fury stood, careful not to disturb any of the… well it might be called furniture, he supposed. Metal concoctions of a sterile and unpleasant variety—though whether or not they were intended as things for human comfort he could not have said.

He took a step closer to the glowing panel. It issued forth a faint greenish light, ethereal and, to be frank, irritating. It put him in mind of Strange.

A sound came from behind him, faint but human. Fury spun and redirected his attention, instantly lowering himself into a crouch and seeking out the sword at his belt. His hand clasped metal just as his eyes fell on a large form… a large, familiar form.

Fury replaced his sword and grunted. Rojhaz.

"Wake yourself," he insisted immediately. "What is this place?"

Rojhaz, so far as Fury could see, did not stir. Not enough for his liking. Instead, he simply said, "I'm awake."

Fury arched an eyebrow. He had not come through hell and high water to watch this one lay about. If it was anger at his "betrayal"… well, that could wait. There were more important issues at hand. "Then answer my question," he insisted.

This time, Rojhaz opened his eyes. They glowed curiously in the reflection from the Strange Panel behind him.

"You lied."

Fury felt his brow knit. He was becoming vexed. "We can discuss that at a later time."

"The Fury I knew—"

Ridiculous. Fury cut his companion off instantly, unwilling to listen to this drivel. He'd attempted to be understanding back there… back there… where he belonged.

He shook his head. He would not succumb to weakness again. He spoke sharply, "Was doubtless not faced with the end of the universe."

Rojhaz seemed to consider this concept as he pulled himself to sitting. Long, large legs swinging like the branches of a great oak off the edge of the… metal… table-thing he'd been lying on previously. "Actually," the man spoke after a moment, "he was. Many times."

The man did not seem to feel the weight of the situation upon him. Fury let his left hand rest on his sword, pushing it upward in a not-quite-nervous gesture. "You will tell me where we are."

For an another long, infuriating moment, Rojhaz was silent. The man seemed intent on pushing the limits of Fury's not-considerable store of patience. But just before Fury was considering knocking him on the head with the nearest blunt object (again), the man spoke. "We're in the government facility that attempted to vaporize me. And instead punched a hole in time and sent me back here."

Fury did not care for the scientific this-and-that. Apparently this was the palace, or perhaps the House of Parliament of the day. And they held captives there. He found the situation odd and somewhat unthinkable, but there was little time for discussion. If they'd attempted to… vaporize Rojhaz in this room, no doubt they could attempt it once more. And undo all they'd done.

He had only one objective, for the moment. "You know the way out, then?"

**Part III**

"It's fuzzy," Steve gave a non-committal and disinterested reply. He wasn't lying, it truly _was_ fuzzy. He hadn't been brought in here of his own volition, and he certainly hadn't walked through the darn door. And the conversation was pointless anyhow.

He dragged the back of his hand across his eyes without a thought. Once he did it, he realized he probably hadn't been finished crying. Did it make him more of a failure, that he sat here in the dark and felt sorry for his losses? Or less, that he could feel his loss so deeply, that it meant so much to him?

In this country, in this time… the former.

"Lions and tigers are fuzzy," Fury practically spit the word back at him. "They will kill us if they find us here?"

Steven simply nodded. "Yes."

"Then we must leave this place."

Fury began wandering around the room with that pronouncement. No, wandering was the wrong word for it. He was searching, methodically working the room over. For something he could use, probably.

Even if this one was a liar, the Furies apparently had more in common than he'd initially realized.

But it didn't change the facts. The fact that all was lost and none of them cared. Freedom was gone. This wasn't the America he'd known.

And none of them cared.

" You've saved your world, Fury. What does it matter to you?"

Fury turned on him slowly, a sort of crazy look in his eye. That look the Other Fury got when he was about to kick some… butt. He paused for a second, examining Steve. Then said slowly, "… you've given up completely. First you would've sacrificed my universe—"

Steve held up a hand, shaking his head once, vehemently. "I wanted to _save_ her."

"Save who? Virginia?"

For a moment, Steve had no reply. The concepts… they'd become so mingled. Stirred up till there was no blue and no red, just purple. America… Virginia… his world. His life.

He forced the answer he thought was best as soon as he could. "Yes. Virginia."

Fury's upper lip curled. It wasn't quite a smile and it wasn't quite a death threat. But it was in that no-mans land between that Furies seemed to occupy, no matter what century they were found in.

"And what she represented," Steve finished, raising his chin defiantly.

Fury turned away, beginning to search the room again, poking at some of the medical appendages as if they might come to life and bite him at any moment. "I grow weary of your whining," he snarled as he went about his search. "You are like a woman who's lost a child. You are not dead yet."

A woman who's lost a child. A man who's lost a country. Only, for Captain America, it was more of the first than the second. They'd created him to defend Freedom. Created him to protect the American Way.

And when he'd done what they asked, they'd tried to vaporize him for it. His own ward had turned on him, bitten the hand that had fed.

Now, it was Steve's turn to snarl, "When you have lived as long as I, when you have seen everything you love die—"

One hand flying into the air, a gesture that clearly informed Steve of Fury's impatience. As if it weren't enough, the man spoke, "Do not give me your justifications. I've been to the edge and back, thanks to young Master Parquagh, and I won't waste the lessons learned on the journey."

Sitting in a mostly-dark room, a medical holding facility, hope seemed like a faded and torn memory to Steve Rogers. How could this man… of all men… a man out of time and space, who had turned traitor to his country and king, ended up stranded in a horrible future… how could he say these things?

" You mean to exist in this time?" was all Steve could think to ask. Sounded ridiculous to him… but there wasn't really any other conclusion he could come to.

Fury turned on him again and that lip curled up. "I don't mean to lie down like a dog and die."

Steve blinked. He'd never been called a dog before, that he could recall. And he'd been called plenty of nasty names for his defense of freedom, that was for sure. Anyhow, what was all that about Peter Parquagh being the one to turn him back down the route to salvation…

Peter. Steve's train of thought derailed for a moment as he remembered a good man he once knew. Peter Parker. Reporter, family man, and one of the finest Super Heroes the world had ever known.

He'd been executed as a traitor while his daughter and wife were watching on public access.

"I knew Peter, too," Steven said softly, lost in the memory. It was like swimming. Faces in far off water, their outlines just barely made out if he squinted hard. A young, handsome science teacher. Not the tired old man they'd led away, bound and shamed. "He was killed, with the others. He was a good man."

Still lost in thought, in memories, it was another moment before a single word brought Steve out of his reverie.

"Parquagh?"

Steve looked up at his companion, almost shocked to see him still there. He shot a look at the door—nothing more than a seamless panel in the wall. Dark one way glass guarded the room from any light that might've shone in the corridor beyond. He blinked for just one moment, then looked back to Fury. "Parker, in this time," he corrected. "He was killed five years ago, an old man."

Fury narrowed his eyes. They were glowing with that wicked spark again. It was even more obvious in the dark, Steve noted. "By those who would have you killed?" he asked in a growl.

Steve returned his gaze to the black window of the door. Waiting for them to come back.

"Yes."

**Part IV**

Fury was appalled, to say the least. He had not heard the full version of Rojhaz's story, and he had not needed to. It was endorsed by Sir Reed, by many whom Sir Niccolo Fury had been more than willing to place his trust in. He knew what he needed to know to get the job done. He had not been the master of Intelligence this time, but an instrument of execution.

However, he had not expected that when he heard the story that it would affect him so personally. Anger was rising in him, though he kept his more violent impulses in check. Stored them away for a time when they might be properly channeled. "This is what is to become of the New World," he snarled, "A world that kills its own heroes."

It was not so different from his own world, he reflected. But that thought was quickly dismissed. Far too inconvenient.

Somewhat irritatingly, Rojhaz only gave the same answer again, "Yes."

"Then it sounds as if there is work to be done," he said, following the man's gaze. Another panel, but this one flat and black with absence of light. In the wall, this time. He moved to examine it more closely.

Like the rest of the place, it held no significance for him. The landscape of the room was alien and somewhat horrific in its own way. He was not scared, per se. But he was not pleased with his situation. Nor the least bit comfortable.

"They will kill you, too. Like they did the Nick Fury of my time."

Fury was only half-listening. The man refused to stop whining like a peasant woman. If not for some kind of nagging sensation in his stomach, possibly something often referred to as practicality (or conscience), he really might've attempted that second assault with a blunt object he'd been considering previously. "Dead, too?" he asked, distractedly. Of course he was dead in this reality. He wouldn't have stood for this kind of madness for a moment… not even for king and country.

He'd proven that to himself all too well recently.

"They killed him for conspiring with… me."

Fury froze. He knew better by now—the man was childlike in his innocence. Fury had made his way through the hard world of international espionage by being an excellent judge of truth. And this was the truth. Uttered guilelessly and with the same evidence of reverie most of his previous admissions had exhibited.

He looked over his shoulder at the other man. Rarely had he seen so large a creature, broad of shoulder and chest, legs like solid rock and a face like to those in statues of the Greek great ones. A powerful man.

Reduced to this. A morose pile of skin, muscle and hair, waiting for death to come. Remembering his better years and wishing to spend whatever time he had left reliving them. Quietly.

He had followed this man's lead at one time… or someone very like him had. He had worked with this man. Respected him. Known him and loved him as a brother. Niccolo knew instinctively that it would have been easy for him to trust the man, had their situations been equal. Had they grown to manhood in the same world.

He believed every word Rojhaz was uttering. And it only made him angrier to see such an attempt at waste.

"Get up," he said quietly.

"There's no point," came the lackluster argument.

Fury took one step closer, hands clenching into fists at his sides. God's balls, there was no point! If the world was truly in such a state, if the New World had fulfilled only a promise of pain for its people (and judging from their interiors, he could only assume the assessment was accurate), then there was a point indeed.

War.

It had always been Niccolo's reason to live. His natural talent, his existence. Subversive warfare in espionage, outright warfare with rocks and sticks and swords. It did not matter a wit to Fury. It was what he did.

Perhaps… he _had_ come to the right time and place, after all.

"Get up," he insisted, this time more forcibly and through clenched teeth. "I will see Peter revenged, and I will see the New World put right."

There was no response from Rojhaz. He simply stared in the direction of that black panel in the wall. Eyes unfocused.

"Get _up!_" Fury took another step closer, preparing to _drag _him up, If necessary.

Rojhaz's eyes focused once more, this time on his own. "You have no idea what it is you're facing," he nearly whispered. There was a strange haunted note in his voice, as one touched by God. Not that Fury believed that one could be "touched by God" in the strictest sense… however, the manner the large blonde man exhibited put him off somewhat. In that it was so very, very quiet. "All these shiny toys and lights—these are just the beginning. They can cause pain like you can't imagine—"

Fury spat on the ground, snarling, "I've had pain like they can't imagine. A man is just a man, future or past. Three hundred years or four, they are still men."

This man was evidence to that, at the least. Inhuman strength or no, he wasn't much of an opponent.

"I was brave once, too."

That was the final straw. Fury took the last few steps between them at a run and grabbed the man by the shoulders, hauling his bulk upward till he stood on his own feet and shaking him violently. He showed no regard for Rojhaz's considerable bulk, and felt none.

"You once said that you wanted to save your country," he gave him a rattling once more, then slammed him backward into the table he'd been sitting upon previously. Rojhaz did not attempt to fight back, as expected, so Fury continued, giving him good solid shakes at the appropriate intervals for emphasis. "_That_, the America of the past, was _not_ your country. _This_ is your country. This festering maze of rats and plague. _Now_ you are here, you have a chance, and you will let it slip away?"

Rojhaz looked past him, as if he didn't feel the shaking at all. As if he had not heard. Toward the flat black panel in the wall.

Disgusted, Fury grunted and released his shoulders. He turned and moved to the edge of the room, in the direction Rojhaz was looking. "I'll go without you. I'll not stay here and seal my own fate. I've come too far. Tell me how to leave this room."

"That panel is part of the door," came the quiet response. "They'll catch you…"

**Part V**

It was a halfhearted attempt to save Fury's life, and Steve knew it. He would die anyhow, and when his time came, Steve could only help it would be a good death. Better than the Fury he knew, who'd been shot like a dog in the streets.

He didn't want to see the man die. He might've lied, but Steve knew he was honorable—he'd done what he had to do to save his world. And Steve would've done no less. He'd thought he _was _doing no less… but he knew better now. He was saner now. He understood.

But he knew that the sooner they found Fury, assuming he even left the room before they discovered him, the sooner they'd find him. And the sooner it would end.

No sooner had the thought formed in his mind than the seams around the door in the titanium walls, formerly invisible, appeared. Fury jumped back and drew his sword in a practiced, easy gesture.

Steve's heart thudded in his throat painfully, choking him. His blood began to rush, his mind to race, readying itself for battle.

Suddenly, he knew he would fight.

No matter what he'd said, no matter what had happened, how he'd failed, or how he'd been used, Steve Rogers was Captain America. And they would not strap him down and torture him again. He would fight as hard as he could, and he would die proud…

The door swung open a foot or so, light spilling from the corridor into the medical holding facility. Steve stood straighter, head high, deep breath, chest out. He was ready.

A food slipped through the door. Wearing a pair of Chuck Taylors. A leg followed… in the greenish scrubs of the facility.

Fury sank into a silent stance of readiness, sword before him.

Steve took two steps forward.

Before a familiar and shockingly welcome face poked through the opening. "Oh, thank god, Cap. We thought you were dead."

A face had never been so beautiful, Steve was certain of it. The messy hair was blonde on top, but the temples were grayed. Had been since he'd been 21, just like his father's. An intelligent face, bright blue eyes just like his mother's.

Steve felt that wetness at the corner of his eyes again. He blinked to fight it off, unable to speak, a slight dizziness taking over momentarily. He reached back for the table to steady himself, feeling his body starting to unwind.

"Sir Reed…," came the whispered words from Fury. If he sounded shocked, it was no wonder.

Franklin Richards poked his head in further to get a look at the other occupant of the room. His eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Nick Fury?" he whistled then looked the man and his Elizabethan costume over a few times. "Nice beard."

And his Uncle Johnny's sense of humor.

"Franklin," Steve finally breathed, feeling himself smile for the first time in… too darn long.

They weren't all dead. The Underground must've survived in some form—and not all of them had betrayed him. He'd naturally assumed that Franklin had been captured, along with the other elders who'd survived this far. But if Franklin Richards was here… that meant…

Young Richards redirected his attention to Steve. "I was afraid we were too late to save you. Valeria is holding them off with the others. Come quickly, Cap. And…," he turned to glance at Fury once more. "You."

Fury didn't put his swords away. "Introductions can come later, boy." Then he turned those maniacal eyes on Steve.

"You. Move. Now."

Steve kept smiling, albeit in a very small way. But he moved, just the same.

_The End/Beginning/Middle_


End file.
